Japan to send Twitter-using humanoids to space

The jettisoned material appears as a white dot floating away from the International Space Station in this view from NASA TV during the spacewalk January 21, 2011. Photo: REUTERS

If Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency's (JAXA) plans succeed, there will soon be a humanoid robot in the International Space Station. The Twitter-using humanoids will be talking companions to the astronauts and will manage the outpost when the human inhabitants of the station are asleep.

The robot could also monitor the crewmembers' health and stress levels and would also be able to talk by communicating with people on Earth and sharing photos through Twitter, space.com reported, quoting news agencies.

We are thinking in terms of a very human-like robot that would have facial expressions and be able to converse with the astronauts, AP quoted a JAXA engineer as saying.

JAXA hopes the tweet-bot will be operational by 2013. It will communicate with the ground through Twitter — primarily feeding photos, rather than original ideas — and provide astronauts with comfort and companionship, an AP report said.

Japan, a global leader in robotics, doesn’t have a manned space program of its own, but is an active participant in the International Space Station project.